Bitcoin Price Crash Incoming? $1.8 Billion BTC Options Expire Today

Bitcoin and crypto markets have had a volatile week. The asset fell to $61,500 on March 20 before recovering slightly.

Today’s big options expiry event could induce more volatility as around 25,300 Bitcoin contracts will expire on March 22.

This week’s expiry event is slightly lower than last week’s, but a huge one worth almost $10 billion will occur at the end of the month.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

Today’s tranche of expiring Bitcoin derivatives has a notional value of $1.8 billion. Additionally, the put/call ratio for these BTC options is 0.57, which means almost twice as many calls (long contracts) are being sold as puts (short contracts).

There is almost $1 billion in open interest, or yet-to-be-settled contracts, at the $65,000 strike price, according to Deribit. Other high OI strike prices for calls include $60K, $70K, and $75K.

Crypto derivatives tooling provider Greeks Live said the market was “encouraged by the Fed’s unsurprising lack of interest rate adjustments,” with BTC recovering all of the previous losses of previous sessions.

“With the recent high RV [realized volatility] and IV [implied volatility] maintaining a high level, the options data shows that the long and short forces are more balanced, and the bullish basis of the market is still in place.”

The market was encouraged by the Fed’s unsurprising lack of interest rate adjustments, with BTC recovering all of the previous session’s losses and rallying more than 10%.
Market sentiment eased significantly and Block trading recovered, accounting for 30% of today’s total… pic.twitter.com/LjvRXJmmWt

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) March 21, 2024

In addition to the big batch of Bitcoin options, around 253,000 Ethereum contracts will also expire today. These have a notional value of $885 million and a put/call ratio of 0.51.

The most open interest, around $659 million, is currently at the $4,000 strike price for ETH, though there is $564 million in OI at $3,000.

Crypto Markets Back in The Red

Total market capitalization has retreated 2.5%, dropping to $2.6 trillion as the correction resumes. Around $236 billion has exited crypto markets since their total cap peak on March 13, according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin was back in the red, falling almost 1.4% to trade at $66,218 at the time of writing, while Ethereum had retreated 0.5% on the day to $3,515 during the Friday morning Asian trading session.

The altcoins were all in the red again, aside from Binance Coin (BNB) and XRP, which had made marginal gains.